MUSIC VIEW; The Met's New 'Walkure' Favors Romantic Naturalism

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When the Metropolitan Opera decided to turn over responsibility for its new ''Ring'' to Otto Schenk and Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, the team that had directed and designed its celebrated ''Tannhauser,'' a corner seemed to have been turned. In recent years, the ''Ring'' has been treated, even at Bayreuth, as a springboard off which trendy stage directors and designers could perform their nip-ups and full gainers, creating splashes of spectacular irrelevancy. The Metropolitan's ''Tannhauser'' bucked that trend, looking back into Wagnerian history for pictorial inspirations and paying honor to the work's spirit without seeming in any way old-fashioned. Thanks to skillful use of modern stage technology, direction fit into the pictures naturally, suggesting a 19th-century staging even while eliminating its worst cliches or softening them almost beyond recognition. Everything seemed to flow from the music, not from a producer's bag of tricks. In other words, Mr. Schenk and Mr. Schneider-Siemssen achieved stylistic consistency, that chimerical fusion of elements that in Wagnerian dogma is called the Gesamtkunstwerke, or complete art work.

The ''Walkure'' that this partnership produced as the first installment in the Metropolitan's projected ''Ring'' follows up on their ''Tannhauser'' success in some significant respects and runs aground in others. It is regrettably necessary to mention only in passing that the singing is mostly mediocre by past Wagnerian standards, but that is an inescapable fact of operatic life in the 1980's. There is no use dwelling on it. The more pressing question is whether this ''Walkure'' is, purely as a physical production, one the Metropolitan can live with and grow with as its ''Ring'' develops. What does it tell us about Mr. Schenk's grand plan?

The scenery for all three acts lives up to reasonable expectations, if not to highest hopes. Romantic naturalism is the theme, realized in the opening scene by a dirt-brown hut that is clearly the home of a roughneck. Bearskins and antlers hang on the walls, and the furniture plainly did not come from Bloomingdale's. This Hunding looks like the kind of black-collar guy who goes to bed in his armor. He does take it off, however, and his browbeaten wife Sieglinde hangs it on a hook, to one's surprise lifting it as if it were no weightier than plastic. With the primitive grittiness of the scene thus established, it comes as a mild shock when Hunding's wife appears for her nighttime rendezvous with Siegmund in a rather smart nightgown with billowy sleeves. The production's costumes, in fact, often jar: if Sieglinde's negligee seems a bit too modish, the armor of Brunnhilde and her eight Valkyrie sisters appears to be made of rags and old quilts.

The first act, however, arouses hopes, especially when the hut's door opens onto a verdant scene for the ''Wintersturme,'' a vivid merger of music and stage picture that some recent ''Ring'' producers have thrown aside in their search for deeper meanings. In fact, major flaws are avoided until the final moments, when the lovers are supposed to be fleeing Hunding's hut (in opera, one never runs away, one flees). Siegmund and Sieglinde are understandably fearful that her brutish husband, although one of the heaviest sleepers in the entire opera literature, will wake up at any moment and discover that the young stranger who accepted a night's refuge from the storm is running away with his wife. In this staging, for no better reason than to provide a socko first-act curtain, the two siblings rush out the door and, instead of fleeing, take time out to consummate their incestuous union on Hunding's front lawn. This is a gratuitous touch, stylistically suitable for prime-time television, but grating in this context.

It can be objected also that the second act, though scenically splendid, often goes astray as Wagnerian theater. It makes good sense to omit such distracting and ineffective devices as Fricka's ram-powered chariot, but in this production that formidable lady comes close to reminding one of a nagging suburban housewife rather than the implacable goddess whose firm stand in favor of marital sanctity forces Wotan to accept his doom. There is a balance to be achieved here between making the gods seem ''human'' and a stiff mythological approach; this Fricka is too human for words - Wagner's words, at any rate.

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Let us bypass the many purely theatrical disappointments, such as the mundane treatment of the climactic scene in which Siegmund's magic sword is shattered. On opening night, it simply fell in two, seemingly at one dirty look from Wotan, while thunder sounded. Forget, too, Wotan's distressing habit of waving his lance about like a baton-twirler for Valhalla High. And the hearth fire that periodically blazes up or goes out, depending on the lighting director's needs of the moment. Such things can easily be fine-tuned out as the production ages.

But can anything be done to curb those idiotically hoydenish Valkyries? Is their incomprehensible giddiness a foreshadowing of what Mr. Schenk has in store for us later in the cycle? Perhaps on the assumption that the Ride of the Valkyries is already an irredeemably silly and hackneyed episode, the director let his eight buxom lady warriors pitch Camp without shame atop the third-act's rocky summit. They did so with such girlish abandon on opening night that one began to fear for their safety and the Metropolitan stage itself. They not only hooted their ''ho-yo-to-ho's'' in manic fashion but rolled about on the simulated rocks in Corybantic frenzy. Whatever for? Wagner's Valkyries are certainly happy to be bringing the bodies of fallen warriors to Valhalla, but Mr. Schenk's direction pushes the scene to the edge of necrophilia.

The design and staging of any new opera production deserve serious scrutiny, but ordinarily there is not much to be gained from such discussion. The deed is done and that is that. With the beginning of a ''Ring,'' however, there are still many miles to go, and the hope of dead-end roads not taken. What needs to be forged before this ''Ring'' is complete is a staging style consistent with the designs, something not always evident in ''Walkure.'' At this point, one-fourth of the way along, Mr. Schenk could do worse than to sit through his ''Tannhauser'' once again, taking notes.

A version of this article appears in print on October 5, 1986, on Page 2002023 of the National edition with the headline: MUSIC VIEW; The Met's New 'Walkure' Favors Romantic Naturalism. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe